Listening to dreams.

some thoughts following on from reading this link on exploring dreaming by paul wood.

i think ignoring dreaming would be as silly as ignoring any other part of our lives. it's just a question of knowing ourselves so we can know when a dream is saying something helpful.

brains seem to do lots of tidying up in the night, and can be completely random too. i've found that on the whole if it feels like normal dreaming (normal for me) not to worry about any of it, nor take any of it too seriously. just enjoy - or not, as the case may be. 

like with learning about hearing God's voice in other areas i've found that it's important to learn to recognise other voices so i can filter them out, or in, if that's what's needed. and learning the reflex to ask God about it rather than just puzzling over it myself.
 
so like learning to listen to my emotions. that's me, saying something to me, from me. if i have a knee jerk reaction to something said by an absolute stranger it's odds on it's not the stranger's fault, i need to listen to where i'm coming from. not to obey any old emotion that comes in my head or even analyse it every time, just to recognise that it's me.i'm very bad at listening to my own emotions. my instinct is to cope, put on a brave face, just not even let them near enough the surface to find out what they should be sometimes. God has released me to dream and this has been a vital way for me to find out about myself and my reactions. if it recurs or is distressing i've made a little book to write it down as fast as poss before it's gone, who was involved and how i was feeling, then i invite God in to speak to me, heal me, help me forgive, etc dreaming was a really important way of me coming to terms with a very difficult relationship where i was being emotionally abused but was trying so hard to be nice and care for the person i was just feeding the unhealthy side of the relationship. i had a repeated dream about planning that person's funeral which frightened me that i was committing murder in my heart. i did lots of repenting (which is never wasted) and God broke through to help me understand that my mind and heart had come to the limits of what i could cope with and that it was now right to rupture the relationship.

ditto with my imagination. if i get to recognise my own imagination's voice i can filter it out when i'm trying to work out if something is from God. it's good to imagining. lots of it. like brain storming, problem solving, day dreaming, story telling, hoping, searching, solution finding, enjoying, fantasising. i need to recognise when i'm doing it and to identify that that's what i'm doing.  for my personal integrity i need to be honest that that's what's going on. God may well use it of course but i mustn't confuse my dreams about skating, walking or leading worship as prophetic unless there's a clear other guidance that it's significant.

and my memory. i've occasionally thought something was a word of knowledge when in fact a while later i realised i'd picked up a detail in how someone looked or something they'd half said. it doesn't make what i said less valid but i need to be careful how i word it in order to have proper personal integrity. so the same in interpreting something i dreamed that includes someone. also a person coming to mind either in a dream or in the day i decided following hearing suzette hatting to not read too much into anything at first, just pray for them, which is never wasted and ask God if he wants us to do anything else after.  i remember a very vivid dream where a certain person came into it and somehow i ended up laying hands on her to pray at which point i woke up and was starting to think i wonder why, but stopped myself and carried on praying. yes i did later find out from another source that that had been a bad patch for her and she'd come through it.  i realised after too that it was really probably best i didn't phone her that time she probably didn't feel free to confide in anyone yet.

and my health. of course there's the ever ready too much spicy or rich food just before bed. all dreams following that are to be ignored ! also when we're over tired everything can take on a slightly more dramatic feel, even in dreams. pain comes through too. my daughter had a series of dreams about being the victim of a land mine. i was worried she had a victim mentality till we worked out that her leg was "going to sleep" getting numb and paralysed ( we now know it's a common symptom in our illness)and her brain was trying to make sense of what was going on. same with some extraordinary dreams someone i knew was having - really psychedelic and very vivid and he wondered if God was speaking to him. we prayed and then realised that all of them included the sensation of vertigo - including climbing a rubber lamp post and riding a bike with peculiar  wheels, and in fact it was part of a growing problem of vertigo which incidentally he was over riding during the day using his eyes to balance him up and getting head aches and exhaustion from that. God's advice following having asked him about it was to go to the dr and have time off work !

my social networks and outer social pressures - good and bad.  i'm from a particular family in a particular neighbourhood in a particular country, have had particular friends and other influences. I may want to please them or to battle against them, but i need to recognise they're there and are a very important part of how i interpret what goes on inside me. especially important are reactions against things and people that we pick up from others esp racism, classism etc and the pressure to conform. i think social interaction is a vital part of how we function and just the simple fact of having some social pressures inhibits the anarchy where sin and selfishness and bullying can grow freely. social contacts feed me and i feed others. encouragement, mirroring, all the rest so it's vital it comes out in dreams too. God can use those dreams but i need to identify whose voice is speaking that's all.

my desires. not what i'm against now, but what do i actively want. this can come up a lot in dreams where we want to comfort ourselves, give ourselves pleasure and so on. dreaming about a particular bloke is not a sign i should marry him :-) dreaming about blokes often could be linked to being lonely or feeling lack of appreciation. none of it wrong, just mustn't interpret it as God's guiding just cos it was nice !

then there's the wonderful way we're designed by God to have healing dreams. it seems i'm not the first person to have had a dream where my teeth become pearls and i woke up with a big part of my fear of dentists being healed. (the other part was when i had a tooth abscess starting but went ahead with leading worship at a ladies day as i was the only musician available. they prayed for healing. i was certain, just certain God had done something but i still ended up having to go to an emergency out of hours visit to the dentist to get it lanced. it was only a few days later i realised that the healing God had done was to actually look forward to getting to the dentists and being grateful for his fingers in my mouth - taking away the fear was a much bigger healing and the abscess was dealt with anyway PTL. just for the story young woman was very distressed at seeing my face swell up as the day went on and become deformed - she was prayed for, her fear of disability went and she ended up working with the handicapped !)

this voice should have been first but i'm putting last cos it's what makes it worth while making all the other voices shut up, or at least keep in their place,  cos it's so precious.  recognising Jesus' voice. my sheep know my voice and they follow me. the more i'm familiar with listening to his voice in my waking life, the better i'll recognise it in my dream life. as usual there's the three way spirit level, word, word and word. is it consistent with what God says and has been written down, the scriptures, graphos ? Is it is consistent with the life of Jesus, the logos, the spoken out loud verb of God ? Is it consistent with what the Spirit of God is saying at the moment to me, prophetically or in other ways - rhema ? am i familiar with listening to God in those ways so i recognise when it's him speaking through what ever source, including my dreams ?